“Now when he heard this, he said, ‘It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.’” Matthew 9:12-13 (CSB)

Do you ever find yourself challenging the status quo? If you’re like me, doing things the way we’ve always done them doesn’t sit well when there’s a better way. But disruption takes courage and audacity to do things differently. Thankfully we can look to our disruptor-in-chief, Jesus Christ, to show us what holy disruption looks like and help us consider how we can imitate Him in healthy ways today.

As Jesus was building His core group of disciples, He didn’t recruit at the local rabbinic school or choose from the elders at the city gate. He started with blue-collar Jewish fishermen. If that didn’t challenge social norms enough, He added Matthew, a tax collector, to the team! Tax collectors were frowned upon because they were Jews collecting taxes from fellow Jews to pay Rome, their oppressor.